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The snack that smiles back ...

Cronus: *to Baby Hestia* You're so cute, I could just eat you up!

Rhea: Honey, 'bun in the oven', is just an expression ...

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... Get it?

Demeter is the first person with bi-polar disorder.

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This just occurred to me ...

If Odin and Frigg are the Ned and Catelyn Stark of Norse mythology, then Zeus and Hera are the Tony and Carmela Soprano of Ancient Greek mythology.

Hera: I BET FRIGG DOESN'T HAVE TO DEAL WITH THIS!

Frigg: You bet I don't!

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Every time a new demigod is born ...

Hera: ZEUS - WHOSE KID IS THIS?!

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Ixion: I bedded the Queen of Heaven! *laughs* She was putting out like a mare in heat! Strike me down, Zeus, you don't have the- *thunderclap and lightning incinerates him*

Zeus: I AM THE ONE WHO CUCKS!

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Tyndareus: WHAT THE HECK ARE YOU DOING WITH THAT SWAN?!

Leda: I can explain - that's not a swan! That's ... ZEUS! I SWEAR I'M NOT WEIRD!

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I read that post. I also never claimed that he's the protector of women in Greek mythology (because there isn't one).

I never said that Ares was a 'feminist icon' (I would not look for one in Greek mythology), this post was written in response to the claims that Hades is a 'feminist husband' when in reality, his marriage with Persephone was the epitome of everything wrong with Ancient Greece (and elsewhere!) so Ares would be the best possible candidate for a male feminist since the bar is set so low, it's in Tartarus.

Even so, I will be editing my post.

Why does Ares get so much praise for killing his daughter's rapist (whereas the other Gods don't)? There are two reasons. One is that Ares has never raped anyone, and two, he was actually tried for it - even though his daughter and Poseidon's son were both demigods so such a thing should not even make it to a trial by the Gods.

There is a version of the myth by Panyasis where Ares was found guilty and forced to serve among mortals, so it was more of an exile (Zeus doled out the same punishment to Apollo and Poseidon for their attempted coup).

Yes, I know about Artemis and Apollo as children protecting Leto from Tityos (it's even on my Hera post), and the reason why I (and others) isn't so moved by it is because as adults, Apollo raped Creusa to conceive Ion (Euripides wrote a whole play about it) and Artemis set up Aura, one of her hunting companions, to be raped by Dionysus (which she mocked Aura about).

Now re-reading the myths, it appears that Ares and Aphrodite may have been together BEFORE she married Hephaestus, or maybe because the timeline of Greek mythology is wonky, but Dionysus is the son of Semele, daughter of Harmonia, which would make granddaughter of Ares and Aphrodite. Dionysus is the one who got Hephaestus drunk enough to free Hera. Yet, Hephaestus gave Harmonia a cursed necklace and robe for her wedding to Cadmus, as revenge for her parents' infidelity during his marriage. (Which, now come to think of it, would make Dionysus her great-great-grandson ...)

I knew that Spartans didn't care much for Ares, but I assumed that her Areia epithet was for him. Aphrodite was represented as an warrior goddess (something which is not at all present in the myths) in Sparta and Kythera.

I may have worded it wrong. What I meant is that Ancient Greeks would have perceived him as the legitimate son, given how they projected their sociocultural norms onto their Gods in their myths. While it's true that Ares is a loser both on and off the battlefield, we are talking about ZEUS here. Y'know, the same Zeus who swallowed his pregnant wife in fear that she would give birth to a son who could overthrow him, even though the prophecy explicitly states that Metis would give birth to a daughter and then a son? (I guess that he was paranoid that she might have carried twins ...) It's also not true that Zeus is incapable of being overthrown (Hera, Poseidon, Apollo and Athena very nearly succeeded had it not been for the intervention of Thetis). You have to take their sociocultural norms into consideration when reading the myths. The cliche of the king fearing that his legitimate son would someday overthrow him was a very real fear back in those days. Funny you bring up Orphism, because we both agree that Zeus would NEVER abdicate the throne to one of his sons, and Hera feared that Semele would take away her throne as Queen consort when she ascended to Olympus but she didn't.

Cronus swallowed Rhea's five children including three daughters, even though the prophecy plainly states that he would be overthrown by a son, and goes on to father three sons with his mistress whom he didn't swallow. Why did he do this? (Besides the fact that he's a dick?) The prophecy doesn't state anything specific. It's meant to be symbolic of the fact that Rhea is his legal wife and so her children (or at least her sons) have a legitimate claim to the throne.

Come to think of it, I think I might write a new post on this, and the true origins of the Oedipal Complex.

Ares and Apollo have next to no interaction in mythological canon, whatsoever. I can't recall one myth in which they do, since Ares doesn't show up a lot. (Ares persecuting a pregnant Leto doesn't count.) I can only think of him boxing Hermes for Tanagra, or the two of being present at the punishment of Ixion. Zeus' favourite child, irregardless of gender, is Athena. When Hera, Poseidon, Apollo, and Athena teamed up to put Zeus in his place, only Athena escapes any sort of punishment. In The Iliad, Ares accuses Zeus of favouring only Athena, and during the Trojan War, Hera asks Athena beat Ares up. Ares represents the hellish side of war, Athena represents the glorious side of war ... I'm surprised that you don't know of this very basic tidbit.

People use Ares persecuting a pregnant Leto against him, but there is no evidence that he ever touched her, only that he prevented her from setting foot in any city, and Hera is not only his mother but the Queen of Olympus. The entirety of Ancient Greece was obeying her whim, and so are we really going to fault her SON for it?

Interesting that he had a festival in which women couldn't attend, but if it was in Athens, then note that women could only attend women-only festivals.

If You Want An ACTUAL 'Feminist Icon' Man With Depth, Then Ares Is Your Best Candidate (NOT Hades!)

He has been SEVERELY misrepresented.

1) Ares is quite literally the ONLY Greek God (sitting on the Twelve Olympians) who doesn't need to be put on an sex offender registry. (I won't speak for his Roman counterpart, Mars, however ...) The worst he ever did, was seduce Phylonome, an hunting companion of Artemis, in the guise of an shepherd. That's hardly comparable to Zeus seducing Callisto in the guise of Artemis, or Alkmene in the guise of her husband Amphitryon, or Poseidon seducing Tyro in the guise of the river-God Enicepus.

2) Not only is Ares the only one who isn't a rapist, but he has actually stood up for sexual assault survivors more than once (even if they're his mother or daughter!) Ares was famously tried (and acquitted!) for homicide by a jury of the Twelve Olympians, after he slew Poseidon's son for raping his daughter. If he was found guilty, the sentence would have been Tartarus and/or losing his godhood. All the gods voted to convict, all the goddesses voted to acquit, and what with Poseidon as prosecutor, Zeus as judge, and Ares as defendant, there were more goddesses on the jury than gods. Even if Zeus cast his vote to convict, it would have come to a tie and the rule was that the defendant is to be acquitted if there is a tie. Ares was also trapped in a jar for protecting his mother Hera from an giant son of Poseidon who stormed Olympus, and he was only a child at the time. He was also present at the punishment of Ixion who attempted to violate Hera, alongside Athena and Hermes.

3) Ares is the father of the Amazons (you hear that, DC Comics?) The founder of the Amazons, Otrera (who, btw, is the mythological founder of the Temple of Artemis at Ephesus), is either his daughter with the wood-nymph Harmonia, or his consort (if she is the daughter of Eurus, God of the North Winds) by whom he fathered Melanippe, Antiope, Hippolyta, and Penthesilea. Their nation's capital city is named Themiskyra in honour of Themis (Zeus' second wife and his aunt by whom he fathered three daughters), whom Ares is on surprisingly close terms with (see the Homeric Hymn to Ares), since he was also the patron god of the law enforcement.

4) One of Ares' epithets is 'feasted by women', in the ancient city of Tegea in Arcadia; during a war between the Tegeans and the Spartans, the women of Tegea defended the city from an invasion led by the Spartan king Charilaus.

5) Women abused by their husbands would pray to Ares for strength, since he is also the God of Courage, which may have (sadly) further contributed to his unpopularity in Ancient Greece.

6) Aphrodite was forced into a marriage as ransom with Hephaestus who petitioned Zeus to marry Athena, Aphrodite expected that she would marry Ares instead (since no one even knew about Hephaestus). Love and War. Their children are Eros (the literal Cupid himself) and Anteros (Unrequited Love), Phobos (Fear), Deimos (Panic), and Harmonia (Harmony). They have an open marriage, despite Ares killing Adonis as a boar and Aphrodite cursing Eos with insatiable lust. Spartans in particular worshipped their marriage, with Aphrodite receiving the epithet of 'Areia' (similar to how Zeus has the epithet of 'Heraion'), and we all know how Spartans treated their women compared to many other Greek city-states. Note how Ares and Aphrodite are the only married couple on the Twelve Olympians besides Zeus and Hera themselves, which brings me to my next point ...

7) Even though Ares was not worshipped by many Ancient Greeks (just as they didn't even feel comfortable mentioning Hades by name), he was always depicted as an handsome soldier, which was the peak of male attractiveness at the time. He was legally considered as the true heir to the throne of Olympus as the only legitimate son of Zeus and Hera (since Hephaestus was conceived via parthenogenesis) and one of the most handsome of Zeus' sons (which is why Aphrodite hoped to marry him). Bizarrely, he could almost be considered as Ancient Greece's cultural equivalent of Prince Charming in a way.

8) Ares is the son of Hera (the Goddess of Marriage, Family, and Childbirth, Patron of Women and Queen of Olympus) and the husband of Aphrodite (Goddess of Love and Beauty; Lust and Sexuality; Desire and Pleasure). He is also the rival to his half-sister Athena (Goddess of Wisdom and Reason; Strategy and Warfare; Arts and Crafts) for his father's affections. He's also on good terms with his grand-aunt, Themis, and I would assume Hestia. Zeus and Hera's other children are all daughters (Enyo, Eileithyia, Hebe, Angelos, Arge, Eleuthera), and Zeus is afraid that Ares would overthrow him (see 7). It's not hard to see why Ares drinks the Respect Women Juice unlike his father, uncles, or brothers.

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If You Want An ACTUAL 'Feminist Icon' Man With Depth, Then Ares Is Your Best Candidate (NOT Hades!)

He has been SEVERELY misrepresented. Wonder Woman, Percy Jackson, DC Comics ... why didn't God of War use Ares instead of Kratos who is just one of Zeus' lieutenants?

(Don't get too excited just yet, it's still a pretty low bar.)

1) Ares is quite literally the ONLY Greek God (sitting on the Twelve Olympians) who doesn't need to be put on an sex offender registry. (I won't speak for his Roman counterpart, Mars, however ...) The worst he ever did, was seduce Phylonome, an hunting companion of Artemis, in the guise of an shepherd. That's hardly comparable to Zeus seducing Callisto in the guise of Artemis, or Alkmene in the guise of her husband Amphitryon, or Poseidon seducing Tyro in the guise of the river-God Enicepus.

That's right, the 'sacker of cities' isn't a rapist himself. (If you don't like irony, then Greek mythology isn't for you.)

2) Not only is Ares the only one who isn't a rapist, but he has actually stood up for sexual assault survivors more than once (even if they're his mother or daughter!) Ares was famously tried (and acquitted!) for homicide by a jury of the Twelve Olympians, after he slew Poseidon's son for raping his daughter. In one version of the myth, he was found guilty and forced to serve among mortals (which was the same sentence Zeus gave Poseidon and Apollo for conspiring against him). The implication is that all the Goddesses voted to acquit, all the Gods voted to convict, and what with Poseidon as prosecutor, Zeus as judge, and Ares as defendant, there were more goddesses on the jury than gods. Even if Zeus cast his vote to convict, it would have come to a tie and the rule was that the defendant is to be acquitted if there is a tie. (This is what occurred in The Oresteia, the setting of which was also the Areopagus.) When two giant sons stormed Olympus with the intention of taking Hera and Artemis, Ares was trapped by them in a jar, and the implication was because he was defending his mother and he was only a child at the time. He was also present at the punishment of Ixion who attempted to violate Hera, alongside Athena and Hermes.

3) Ares is the father of the Amazons (you hear that, DC Comics?) The founder of the Amazons, Otrera (who, btw, is the mythological founder of the Temple of Artemis at Ephesus), is either his daughter with the wood-nymph Harmonia, or his consort (if she is the daughter of Eurus, God of the North Winds) by whom he fathered Melanippe, Antiope, Hippolyta, and Penthesilea. Their nation's capital city is named Themiskyra in honour of Themis (Zeus' second wife and his aunt by whom he fathered three daughters), whom Ares is on surprisingly close terms with (see the Homeric Hymn to Ares), since he was also the patron god of the law enforcement.

4) One of Ares' epithets is 'feasted by women', in the ancient city of Tegea in Arcadia; during a war between the Tegeans and the Spartans, the women of Tegea defended the city from an invasion led by the Spartan king Charilaus.

5) Women abused by their husbands, as I've read online (but cannot verify), would have likely prayed to Ares for the strength to survive, which makes sense since he is the God of Courage (who else would they have prayed to?), which may have (sadly) further contributed to his unpopularity in Ancient Greece. Likely women also prayed that their abusive husbands would die violently on the battlefield in the next war ... He is, after all, the 'slayer of men'. It's not any different from how mothers would pray to Demeter to bring their daughters back alive, or unmarried girls would pray to Artemis to escape an unwanted marriage ... There's no 'protector of women in Greek mythology' because the Hellenistic religion worked through power bargains with the Gods and their respective domains ...

6) Aphrodite was forced into a marriage with Hephaestus in exchange for Hera's release (Hephaestus initially sued for the hand of Athena which ... didn't work out; see Erichthonius for more detail), Aphrodite expected that she would marry Ares. (They may or may not have been sleeping together before since Dionysus is the one who got Hephaestus drunk enough to do it ... Dionysus is the son of Semele, daughter of Harmonia, Ares and Aphrodite's daughter ... or maybe it's just the wonky timeline in Greek mythology ... ) Love and War. Their children are Eros (the literal Cupid himself) and Anteros (Unrequited Love), Phobos (Fear), Deimos (Panic), and Harmonia (Harmony). They have an open marriage (they are often acknowledged as each other's consort in mythology), despite Ares killing Adonis as a boar (although one version has Artemis killing Adonis as revenge for Hippolytus) and Aphrodite cursing Eos with insatiable lust. Spartans gave Aphrodite the epithet of 'Areia' (similar to how Zeus has the epithet of 'Heraion'). Note how Ares and Aphrodite are the only official couple, whether they're depicted as married or otherwise, on the Twelve Olympians (following her divorce from Hephaestus) besides Zeus and Hera themselves, which brings me to my next point ...

7) Even though Ares was not worshipped by many Ancient Greeks (just as they didn't feel comfortable even mentioning Hades by name), he was always depicted as an handsome soldier, which was the peak of male attractiveness at the time. Legally, he would have been considered as the 'legitimate' heir to the throne of Olympus as the only 'true' son of Zeus and Hera (since Hephaestus was conceived via parthenogenesis), given how the Ancient Greeks projected their own sociocultural norms onto their Gods. He is also one of the most handsome of Zeus' sons (along with Apollo, Hermes, and Dionysus). Bizarrely, he could almost be considered as Ancient Greece's cultural equivalent of Prince Charming in a roundabout way.

8) Ares is the son of Hera (the Goddess of Marriage, Family, and Childbirth, Patron of Women and Queen of Olympus) and the husband of Aphrodite (Goddess of Love and Beauty; Lust and Sexuality; Desire and Pleasure). He is also the rival to his half-sister Athena (Goddess of Wisdom and Reason; Strategy and Warfare; Arts and Crafts) for his father's affections, and shares jurisdiction with his half-sister Artemis over the Amazons. He's also on good terms with his grand-aunt, Themis, and I would assume his aunt Hestia. Zeus and Hera's other children are all daughters (Enyo, Eileithyia, Hebe, Angelos, Arge, Eleuthera), and a part of Zeus is concerned that Ares would overthrow him (more on that in another day, for another post). It's not hard to see why Ares drinks the Respect Women Juice unlike his father, uncles, or brothers.

9) People often use Ares persecuting a pregnant Leto at Hera's orders against him, disregarding that Hera is not only his mother but the Queen of Olympus. Even then, he never did anything more than deny her entrance to cities. The entirety of Ancient Greece itself was under orders to deny Leto sanctuary, and so are you really going to fault Ares for it? ZEUS didn't even hold it against Ares, even though he's his least favourite and Leto is his favourite woman ...

9) Ancient Greek mythology is largely passed through Athens, and they associated Ares with foreigners such as the Thracians (Thrace is said to be the God's birthplace) whom they regarded as stupid, uncivilized barbarians (see 6). His respecting women is likely meant to be seen as a negative trait, and highly correlated with how Ares was seen in general (see 3).

Note: I am NOT calling Ares an 'feminist icon' man, I'm just saying that he is the best possible candidate in Greek mythology.

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I know this is lame but ...

Demeter is the first person to have seasonal depression ...

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Ares and Athena's sibling rivalry ...

Athena: "Daddy, Ares hurt me!"

Ares: "OH, SHIT-" *thunder crackling*

Zeus: "DIE!"

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If You Want The Pop Culture Version of Hades x Persephone, Then You Want Eros x Psyche

Overprotective and overbearing mother who hates your significant other? Aphrodite is the mother-in-law from Tartarus!

No abduction? Psyche goes to where Eros is, he didn't kidnap her.

No sexual assault? Eros, even after literally stabbing himself with one of his arrows, still never tries to do anything without her consent.

No incest? Eros and Psyche are not even related, which is almost unheard of for this pantheon.

The heroine being badass? Psyche goes through numerous trials set by Aphrodite to show that she's worthy of being with her son, and wins them all! She got a little help, of course, since she was still mortal, but she still made it!

The heroine being taken care of by the hero? Everything Psyche needed, she got when she lived with Eros (including sex).

Love at first sight and blind trust? When Eros is sent by his mother to make Psyche's life hell, he was so distracted by her beauty that he accidentally stabbed himself with one of his arrows. When Psyche started living with Eros, the one condition was that she could not see him, ever. He was literally invisible. Yet, Psyche fell in love, anyway, without even knowing what he looked like! She probably didn't even know his name. When she accidentally stabbed herself with one of his arrows, she fell in love twice.

People not approving of their relationship? Aphrodite is the mother-in-law from Tartarus.

A couple fighting to be together? Guess what the second half of the myth is about?

The hero is staggeringly powerful and the heroine isn't? Psyche is a mortal princess, Eros is the God of Boners in a mythology where Zeus' inability to control his dick is the inciting incident of 80% of the canon. Eros has Zeus' number and yanks on his chain every other week.

Oh, and if you truly cannot live without the Queen of the Underworld ... she makes a cameo appearance, in which she tries to assassinate Aphrodite over Adonis!

So, hey, can we stop romanticizing the Hades x Persephone myth and instead romanticize the Eros x Psyche myth?

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Why Hades x Persephone Isn't The Healthy Couple You Think They Are (Part 2)

I strongly recommend that you read Part 1 before Part 2 ...

In my first post, I thoroughly debunked the myths people have about this myth, and re-examined the historical context behind the myths, and so this post will just be wrapping things up with my own thoughts on the subject.

Another fairly minor but still common misconception I've seen is that Hades is steadfast loyal to Persephone, which is not true. In the original myth about Minthe, the word used is pallake, which is Greek for 'concubine' (even though Minthe never bore Hades a child). In the original myth about Leuke, an Oceanid and friend of Persephone, the word used is adamavit, which is an Latin verb used for describing passionate yet adulterous love. (Hades also abducted Leuke to the Underworld, so ...) The Roman poet, Vergil, claims that Hades fathered the Furies with Nyx (and Nyx is their mother according to Apollodorus). Hades is, after all, King of the Underworld and ancient kings will always have their concubines if only one can be the queen consort (see my post, Why Hera Isn't The Jealous Wife You Think She Is).

People use Persephone turning Minthe into, well, a mint plant and stomping on her as 'proof' of her love for Hades, but that's only one version of the myth, the other version of the myth has DEMETER turning Minthe into a mint plant and stomping on her, which is likely to be the original myth since there was a hill named after her in the neighborhood of Pylos, and there was a temple to Hades and a grove to Demeter at its foot (source: Theoi.com). They also disregard how Persephone has cheated on Hades with Adonis (one of the only goddesses to cheat on her husband), whom she raised as a baby (so a classic case of the abused becoming the abuser) and so Adonis chose Aphrodite over her. A girl is not going to fall in love with her uncle who kidnapped and raped her, and if she does, we would call that Stockholm Syndrome.

Really, the only inclination I've seen of these two actually loving each other (or, rather Persephone loving Hades) is when Melinoe was conceived on the banks of the river Cocytus ... but that's in the Orphic Hymns, where Persephone has sex with her daddy Zeus who is the guise of her husband, Hades. No, Hades saving Persephone from Pirithous doesn't count, because Zeus would have done the same if it was Hera (and he did, in many myths). Sure, Hades treats Persephone with respect, but bear in mind he's terrified of her mother, who made it abundantly clear (pun intended) that she could make his job infinitely harder.

Oh, and few people know this, but Demeter's son, Plutus, the God of Wealth, was originally fathered by Hades (y'know, the God of Wealth, whose name is also Plutus). Ioanna Papadopoulou, an Greek author, actually touched upon this in her retelling of the Homeric Hymn to Demeter, Winter Harvest.

Lastly, the final misconception is that Hades and Persephone are together for six months, which is why we have the fall/autumn and winter season, but that's a misconception dating back to the application of Victorian Era protoscience to Hellenism. The Mediterranean climate of Greece and Rome doesn't allow for four seasons, and heavy snow don't occur in Greece, the myth is to explain why crops don't grow for a third of the year (since the Ancient Greeks divided their calendar into thirds), so, really, Hades only has his wife around for four months (two in the winter, and two in the summer). In the myth of Adonis, Zeus divided Adonis' time with Persephone and Aphrodite into thirds; he gets four months with Persephone, four months with Aphrodite, and a third by himself (which he chooses to spend with Aphrodite).

I'd also like to mention the reason why you don't see other myths about Hades and Persephone is because of the taboo on death-worship in Ancient Greek culture. Ancient Greeks would address Hades by his epithet, 'Aidoneus', or his nickname, 'Zeus of the Underworld'. They would also address Persephone as 'Kore' or 'Despoina' (also the name of her half-sister fathered by Poseidon). People would only use Persephone's name in curses. There is a reason why you don't see Hades depicted as unreasonable (his epithet, 'Aidoneus', is Greek for 'reasonable mind'), when compared to Zeus and Poseidon. People figured out that Zeus was lustful and Poseidon wrathful, so they attempted to lift up Hades as some kind of dark and repressed antihero, but really, it's more Palpatine bad versus Vader bad.

FUN FACT: In Ancient Greece, unmarried girls who died young was considered a Really Bad Thing. A big upset for the family - basically it meant you were a shitty parent. (Of course, assuming that these families weren't the cause of their deaths ...) So, what the women in the family would do is dress their deceased daughters up as if they were going to get married. The funeral procession would play out like a wedding profession and during the bridal ceremony, the daughter would "marry" Hades as his newest concubine. It's a way to comfort parents because believing that your daughter is at his mercy sounds terrible, but with Persephone, you can imagine that she's looking after your lost little girl. (I suspect it's also to ward off necrophilia ...)

My own thoughts on this subject?

I am absolutely convinced that women just really want to fantasize about the original versions of myth but also don't want to admit it so they have to retell it. Women seem to have collectively agreed they would get excited over the thought of getting taken by an abusive kidnapper. I think our tendency to write and seek out these types of retellings (where there is a romanticization of an abusive situation) is also deeply connected to our internalized misogyny and the romanticization of abuse that a lot of us have grown up with. We were taught in many different ways that physical (including sexual) and emotional (including verbal), stalking, abduction, etc, is romantic when guys do it. We were taught that it means he loves us and that it's something we should desire; that it means we are special. (E.G. Little girls are told that if a little boy hits her, it means he likes her, and they also get shown movies like Beauty and the Beast.) Growing up with these messages instilled in us through sayings, stories and so on, as well as (for many of us) having experienced this firsthand in romantic and sexual relationships means it's now deeply rooted in us; in our worldviews and sexualities, and so we tend to repeat the pattern.

I think making Hades the hero and Demeter the villain in modern retellings is another proof of how much we are influenced by the patriarchy. It just fits in so perfectly in all the stereotypes about the evil mother-in-law.

Plus it helps that Hades is "shadow daddy". He is dark, brooding, mysterious, emotionally distant, vaguely Goth, probably tall and skinny. The myth of Hades and Persephone hits all the tropes popular in Epic Dark Romance like a wrecking ball, 50 Shades of Hades and all, but let's just normalize being abducted and raped by your uncle as a child, right?

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Why Hades x Persephone Isn't The Healthy Couple You Think They Are (Part 1)

TRIGGER WARNING: Mentions of child marriage, sexual assault/abuse, unhealthy/abusive relationships

Oh, holy shit! I went there!

Brace yourselves, folks! You're in for a long, bumpy ride! I'm going to have to separate this into two entries!

Looking around on and offline, it's all too easy to get the wrong impression of Hades and Persephone. With all the fanfic and merchandise (e.g. Lore Olympus, Punderworld, Hadestown, Hades, Class of the Titans, Percy Jackson, A Touch of Darkness, Kaos, Blood of Zeus, Neon Gods, Super Giants ... the list is seemingly endless), you'd easily be forgiven for thinking, and I quote, they're one of the top three healthiest and most functional relationships in Ancient Greek mythology. (I actually saw a YT video on this.)

No, no. A thousand times, no.

The whole point of their relationship that people seem to be missing is that it's a toxic and abusive one, even by the standards of Ancient Greece, and I'll explain why in extensive detail below. (Source: Theoi.com and JSTOR)

Firstly, we need to dispel the baseless notion that Persephone wandered into the Underworld on her own, or that she made the choice to willingly leave with Hades, which came from an book written in the 1960s/1970s by Charlene Spretnak who claims that misogynistic men stole away Persephone's power and agency by making her a victim of Hades, because she wanted to get her daughter into Greek mythology and didn't want to tell her the truth. (Yes, because lying to your daughter about the very real historical misogyny in Ancient Greece is the feminist thing to do, amirite?!) It has led to an demonization of Demeter (who should be, by all accounts, hailed as an feminist mother in an era of oppressive patriarchy). There are literally NO versions of the myth (Homeric Hymn, Diodorus Siculus, Apollodorus, Claudian, Ovid) in which Persephone wasn't abducted, it's literally called 'The Rape/Abduction of Persephone' for a reason. There is even a famous statue of Hades violently kidnapping (a barely pubescent) Persephone in Italy!

In the Claudian version of the myth, Hades literally puts Persephone in chains: She saw Proserpine shut in the dark confines of a prison-house and bound with cruel chains.

Now, let's get into the other baseless notion (spread by YouTubers such as Overly Sarcastic Productions) ... that Hades didn't rape Persephone, he only abducted her because of a mistranslation, that rape and abduction are the same word. (Oh, please just kill me ...) That's not true, because 'rape' and 'abduction' are the same word in the LATIN language, not the GREEK language ... and they're used interchangeably because abduction always led to rape back in those days (and often these days!) You want proof that he raped her (or at least coerced her into sex)? Here it is:

"There he found the lord in his palace sitting on a bed with his bashful bedmate, very much unwilling, longing for her mother."

Regardless of the true translation, he was forcing her to share a bed with him, and why would he do that if they weren't having sex? In Claudian's version, Persephone was literally screaming about how she was inevitably going to lose her virginity to Hades as she was being taken by him: "Happy girls whom other ravishers have stolen; they at least enjoy the general light of day, while I, together with my virginity, lose the air of heaven; stolen from me alike is innocence and daylight."

People online bring up Overly Sarcastic Productions' video on Hades and Persephone as a rebuttal, and yet on OSP's website, she brings up the 'unwilling bedmate'. (OSP isn't a valid source of information  -  she admits that she deeply sanitizes these myths for her YT videos.)

I see people online defending Hades by saying that it's more of a forced marriage than a child abduction, which is true ... and they're also completely missing the entire point of the myth, which is why it's WRONG! It's true that in Ancient Greece (and elsewhere!), a man only needed to obtain the father's permission to marry his daughter, it didn't matter if her mother or the daughter herself disagreed. Even so, fathers in Ancient Greece (even Athens!) would at least inform their daughters of it, especially if the marriage was to another relative, hence why the Homeric Hymn goes out of its way to condemn Zeus for it. Yet, in the Claudian version of the myth, Hades threatens Zeus with releasing the Titans from Tartarus if Zeus did not comply with his demands for a wife and family. Ovid has Hades shot with an love arrow from Eros because Aphrodite did not want one more virgin goddess.

That's not even getting into how Persephone isn't just a young woman, she's implicitly an actual CHILD in these myths. The Homeric Hymn to Demeter, which is the earliest source of the myth, calls her 'Kore' (girl). Ovid's retelling of the myth in his Metamorphoses has this line:

Here Proserpina [Persephone] was playing in a glade and picking flowers, pansies and lilies, with a child's delight, filling her basket and her lap to gather more than the other girls, when, in a trice, Dis [Haides] saw her, loved her, carried her away--love leapt in such a hurry! Terrified, in tears, the goddess called her mother, called her comrades too, but oftenest her mother; and, as she'd torn the shoulder of her dress, the folds slipped down and out the flowers fell, and she, in innocent simplicity, grieved in her girlish heart for their loss too.

In Ancient Greece (with the exception of Sparta), the average age of marriage for girls was 12-14 to grown men twice their age, and if you were of the upper-class, then you would be married off to your half-uncle. Greece hasn't been pagan for centuries now, and yet girls as young as 14 were still being married off to old men for financial reasons in the rural countryside until 1970. Child marriage is still widespread globally to this day (the United States leads the Western world in child brides because of the Mormons and the Amish, with only 12 banning it by 2024, and two-thirds of teen pregnancies are conceived via statutory rape by men in their twenties).

Ancient Greece was a society in which young women and little girls alike would vanish off the face of the earth, and their mothers would never come to know of them again, either because they were dead and/or holed up in the basement of a rapist's house. This is because Ancient Greece was a society in which they regularly and routinely exposed baby girls to die, which created an severe gender imbalance in many city-states (mainly Athens), leading many men to resort to what we would consider in the modern era to be human trafficking (abduction and rape) of women and girls from city-states such as Sparta, Crete, Mycenae, etc. (The myth of Theseus and Ariadne also reflects this.) Mothers in Ancient Greece would pray to Demeter to bring their daughters back alive. The EXACT SAME literally goes on today, in countries like China, Vietnam, Thailand, Armenia, India (which was once invaded by the Greeks under Alexander the Great and adopted many of their cultural practices).

The grief and pain felt by Demeter and Persephone is still felt by mothers and daughters over the world. That's part of the reason why the incessant romanticization of this myth has a damaging side to this, it is not something we have left behind, and women still continue to fight against it. When we have a collective perception that this isn't a practice anymore, it's easier for it to continue, hidden in plain sight, while we dismiss mothers and loved ones for being "dramatic" and "ruining" a "love story", it becomes easier to turn a blind eye to the Demeters and the Persephones all around of us.

To be continued ... in Part 2

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Why Hera Isn't The Jealous Wife You Think She is ...

Yes, you read that right.

One of the biggest misconceptions about Hera in modern popular culture is that she's waiting in the dark, ready to strike out at Zeus' next extramarital affair and bastard child, but, eh ... that paints an largely inaccurate depiction of what's ACTUALLY going on.

Firstly, Zeus has somewhere between 92 to 100 children (I'm not kidding when I say there's literally a entire book written about this subject) whereas you can literally count all of the women and children Hera had a problem with, on both hands.

Aegina (mother of Aeacus)

Leto (mother of Artemis and Apollo)

Io (mother of Epaphus)

Elara (mother of Tityos)

Callisto (mother of Arcas)

Semele (mother of Dionysus)

Alcmene (mother of Herakles)

Lamia (mother of Akheilos)

Persephone (mother of Zagreus)

Aphrodite (mother of Priapus)

Yup, that's literally ALL OF THE TIMES Hera has gone 'woman scorned'. Two of the aforementioned examples are not even 'canon' (Persephone and Aphrodite), and while it may still seem like a lot by itself, doing the math you realize that it's only 7-10% since it's ZEUS we're talking about. Sometimes she'll entirely leave the moms alone and exclusively go after the kids, sometimes she'll mostly go after the mom and otherwise leave the kids alone, sometimes she'll go after both ... Not saying that what Hera does isn't disproportionate, especially if they were victims of SA, but with Io, it was little more than harmless trolling and she usually gets over it eventually (Leto is the only one she's still salty about).

(Also does anyone else notice that she never went after Zeus' daughters? It's not a coincidence when that Dionysus was raised as a girl to protect him from Hera's wrath!)

Why are these ones the only ones she got upset about? Well, it's not because they were loved by Zeus (only Leto, Semele, and Alcmene), or that their kids were dearer to him than Hera's (only Leto, Semele, and Alcmene). Hell, in The Iliad, when Zeus listed off his greatest loves to Hera, he only mentioned Leto, Semele, and Alcmene. Rather, it's the catharsis factor. See, Hera is the long-suffering-in-silence wife, who willingly turns a blind eye to Zeus' 'sex-capades', because that's what she knowingly signed up for, until her resentment builds up overtime and indiscriminately explodes onto whomever is his current flavour of the week. Sure, there may be other contributing factors at play as to why she targets these specific women (e.g. Semele is a priestess and Hera's great-granddaughter through Ares, Io is her priestess, etc.), but all in all, Hera is the woman wearing the queenly mask and heavy is the head who wears the crown.

Why did I say that Hera knew what she signed up for? Zeus is the King of Gods (so King of Kings), and real life kings in Ancient Greece (and elsewhere!) were polygamists - one queen consort and as many concubines as he desired. The Queen Consort's role is to manage the harem and her sons are automatically considered next in line to the throne. Hera is listed as Zeus' third wife (Metis as his first and Themis as his second) and the only one who is ever acknowledged as Queen (because his previous marriages occurred BEFORE he ascended to the throne post-Titanomachy - Rhea was Queen Dowager after they overthrew Cronus), but he also has Eurynome, Demeter, Mnemosyne, Leto, Maia, and co. as his concubines. Notice how with the sole exception of Leto, Hera never got mad about the goddesses Zeus knocked up. That's because if they bear Zeus a child, they're automatically the newest addition to his harem. Leto is the sole goddess to ever bear the brunt of Hera's wrath, because she's that favourite concubine who poses a potential threat to Hera (if you catch my drift).

(If you want a better understanding of harem politics, then watch any Chinese palace drama.)

I'd also like to mention that in Ancient Greece, it was legal to murder your husband's mistresses, and so what Hera did wasn't wrong or illegal in the eyes of Ancient Greeks. It was, in fact, probably cathartic since women had to live in the fear of being cast out onto the streets if their husband decided to divorce them for another wife. Moreover, Hera, as the Queen consort, had the authority to cast any disciplinary action on any women and children of the harem as she saw fit. In the eyes of the law, children of the concubine were always servants to children of the wife. That's what Jason was trying to do to Medea by the way, and why she reacted in the way she did (killing the other woman and even her own children).

Zeus and Hera, as hard as it may be for some to believe, is/were THE OTP of the Hellenistic religion, even if the myths depict them as an marriage of convenience at best (because the Ancient Greeks liked to project their own sociocultural norms onto their mythology). Still, I can personally understand that. In ancient China, the Emperor was the dragon and father of the nation, the Empress was the phoenix and mother of the nation. There was even a saying that the Emperor and Empress were two bodies with one mind. Even if people knew the truth about royal marriages behind closed doors, they were still revered as the Perfect Couple in the public sphere.

Source: Theoi.com (your go-to source for authentic Greek mythology!)